To Life and Death and Life again
by Anniehow
Summary: The answer to your question is: Yes. This is what you'll become. Spoilers for Malleus Malleficarum


To Life, and Death (and Life again)

TIMELINE: far-future fic  
SPOILERS: up to Malleus Malleficarum (E09S03)  
WARNING: Multiple character death (_far future!_), mentions of violence and non-con  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This was written right after MM. Then I let it sit for awhile in my hard drive. Then I started hating it. Then the awesome Rinkle offered to beta it and convinced me that it din't suck. Aso here it is.

Finally, would love any kind of feedback you'd like to share :-)

Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by it's creator Kripke and the CW network, and I am in no way affiliated with them.

* * *

Clawing your way out of Hell is every bit as harrowing as it sounds.

First of all you need to climb out of the Pit, and that means that you have to reach one of the walls and hold on (not easy), then you have to go up (even less easy) and take care that you don't fall back down (pretty much the opposite of easy; beginning to see the pattern?).

In order to move anywhere in the Pit you have to take somebody else's place and make them fill back the position you've left behind, because not only isn't space exactly a commodity in Hell, it just doesn't exist (pretty much like time, but that's a _whole_ other story), and if you're pushing someone down you better believe they're not going to take it with a smile and an "on you go then".

And once you reach the top you _still_ have to find a hole to crawl through and escape earthside before someone else gets a hold of you and you have to start all over again.

Also, all this? You have to learn on your own as you go along, because damned souls are not very forthcoming with information unless it suits them, and letting somebody else out never suits anybody.

And once you finally reach the earth… well, as it always is with these things, the expectations far exceed the actual experience.

It had simply been too long, and too many things had changed, him included.

He dove into the first available body, hoping that human senses would help him recognize the place. Also being a black billowy cloud of smoke is no fun.

The meatsuit was a woman, and he didn't like her. She was a junkie who had forgotten all about others, and had done pretty much all there is to do to get another dose. She only thought of herself, and that kind of selfishness he just couldn't stand.

Dissatisfied with the woman and being back in a place that was just too different to remember fondly, he ended up taking a hike to the nearest cemetery to dig up a couple of graves and salt and burn the bodies. Just for old times' sake. He left the meatsuit there, after having called the authorities. More than she deserved, really.

He wandered a bit; took another meatsuit in the nearest city, this time someone more like he had been, before. Same coloring and same build; his name was Sean, a name that had become tragically antiquated and that had gotten him teased mercilessly his whole life. Sean loved a woman with every fiber of his being, and he cared for her and protected her even though she didn't know he existed. He was content to watch over her from afar, and sometimes to take pictures he hung in his room, and one time he had to beat up this jerk who had gone on a date with her and who was planning on inviting her again, but he wasn't good enough for her and Sean made sure he knew it.

The first thing he did when he became Sean was shave because big bushy beards might have become the latest fashion trend but he still considered them really weird. It was heartening to see that humans still bowed to bad fads because that was something familiar, but once it was all off he was very disappointed to see that Sean was no where near as handsome as his original body had been. But then again he remembered being considered "just edible", and he couldn't expect all his meatsuits to measure up to that standard.

After improving his looks he decided to help Sean with the love of his life. This was tricky because, as he told Sean, he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell with her (and _he would_ know about it!). She was just out of his league. Also, she had probably spotted him that time with the image grabber in the park and what a dork because those things are _tiny_, he could have hidden it better. Still, he gave it the old fashioned shot and went through all the modern motions. Predictably she refused his card and didn't want to hand over hers.

Having shown Sean that normal wasn't going to cut it he went with his own plan, showed up in the girl's room one night and snapped her pretty head right off. Before that he took her by force because, again predictably, she didn't want to have sex with him and Sean was pretty adamant that he wanted her badly, and finally because he didn't want for her to die in peace or all this was going to be futile and they'd have to wait for their next cycle to do something about it. And also because sex! He had missed that.

It worked perfectly: she died in fear and rage and shunned the reaper, and her soul attached herself to Sean's. Now she was only his, for eternity, and she was going to give back the same love he had shown her in life. He left them at it.

They gave him an idea, though, and this time he held off taking another meatsuit in favor of doing some research. The truth was that he was lonely. He could easily string along a couple of random humans and bind their souls to him, but he wanted something better. Somewhere out there there were souls that he had known before, that had passed through who knows how many cycles, but their immortal essence was going to be the same. He wanted to find those. Not easy, again, but after what he'd already been through "easy" took a whole new relative meaning. Besides, he had time.

Admittedly, he wasn't sure how. Trial and error is the key-word here. The first one he didn't even find on his own, she found _him_. And, he was embarrassed to admit, he didn't even recognize her until he had her pinned to the wall and was slowly squeezing the life out of her. In the final spasm of death, just as the reaper swooped in, he _saw_ her, and he _knew_ her, and he dropped her but it was too late. The soul was already gone. After all this time she had found her way on the path of the hunters, fighting with them instead of simply marrying one. But that was ok. He'd just have to wait for her soul to cycle back into another life, and then come and get it.

He honed his skills after that. Traced a soul all the way across an ocean, took a much nicer meatsuit and continued his investigation. The coloring was all off since Dr. Aries, though not exactly Asian, still must have had a lot of far eastern blood to have those straight black hair and almond-shaped eyes, but he was handsome and fit and brilliant and very idealistic. He was going to save the world. He had found the cure for cancer.

Ok, he _believed_ he had found the cure for _pheochromocytoma_, but he was finding it difficult to prove. The human test trials had given back mixed results but only because the system was severely handicapping his research, allowing him to test it only on terminal patients over the age of seventy. With the interest of human kind at heart he had started to test it in the pediatric ward as well, without telling the parents and on kids too small to report him. So far one of them had died and one of them had gone into remission, and his research continued. Well, would have continued, but he needed Dr. Aries out of the lab and pounding the streets. They had work to do.

They found a soul. Once upon a long time ago, this soul had belonged to the best hunter in the world. Through all those cycles it had gained some social graces but it had retained the same brand of stubbornness and general assholiness. Some things were just eternal. Now Officer of the Armed Law Siobhan was the best of her division, and given another fifteen to twenty years she would undoubtedly rise to the top. Good thing too, since the current Chief was a waste of space and surprisingly chummy with an alleged crime lord.

Surely it would be better if Officer Siobhan didn't have to wait that much time to clean up the streets. She'd probably take a deal, if he framed it right. The drive to self-sacrifice was still there. But it had already happened once, and the same soul could be weary of it. He didn't want to mangle things up now, he didn't want to have to wait for a new cycle, and there was at least another soul he wanted to have as quickly as possible, and _that_ would require another lengthy search, provided it was on earth at all.

He started by giving her his card, and she gave hers back. He made Dr. Aries smile at her the same way he had smiled at countless girls centuries ago in his own meatsuit. They were going to make a good team.

After all, they just needed to pick up where they had left off.


End file.
